Category Archives: Reviews

Profilactic is a lifestreaming website. What is lifestreaming? Some of us tend to go on a wild signing-up spree when we see amazing new Web 2.0 tools or social networks. We soon realize that we have a staggering number of accounts across the internet and our data is strewn all over the place. Then we wish there was some way to keep all this content in the same place and access them quickly. This is where lifestreaming comes into the picture.

Lifestreaming also helps us to share our online content, profiles and activities with a wide audience including friends and family. Profilactic helps you create a mashup of all your content from various websites and share it with other friends on the site. You can also create a lifestream badge with links to your various accounts and the your latest activity on each of the accounts. This badge helps you display your lifestream on your blog or website for others to see. Similarly, an RSS feed can be generated for all the content you have posted across multiple sites.

You can request Profilactic to add new sites which may not be present in the existing list of supported sites. Profilactic lets you aggregate your content with RSS Feeds from your websites. And of course, it counts your tweets in from twitter. Another important features is the ability to save clippings of content where you or your site have been quoted or mentioned on another site. Check this out and trust me, it is pretty useful!

The thing that has recently caught my attention is Digsby. I have always longed for a multiple IM client that helps integrate all chat services but is not minimalistic and geeky. Though, Pidgin is a great multiple IM client, it has issues in enabling file transfers and video chat. It calls for extra-geeky meddling with options, if these things are to be made possible.

Digsby is a cool IM client which is sure to be the next big thing like Firefox. And like Firefox, it seems to hog a lot of memory. However, trust me that should not be a deterrent in using Digsby. This is because Digsby can make up for Msn, Yahoo, AIM and Gtalk clients. Imagine running all of these clients individually and it would certainly work out to that much of memory usage.

The setup file is over 11 MB and takes a while to download. Once this thing is installed, it is completely hassle-free. Though, it has the characteristic geek tinge to its minimalist interface, it can quickly be customized. In fact, geeks have more to rejoice for because it allows for back-end customization and a lot of scope for the ones that cannot keep from exploratory coding adventures.

Rightly represented by a friendly cute logo, Digsby is intuitive all the way. You can immediately configure all your IM accounts. But here is the easter egg. You can also configure your Facebook and Twitter into this IM client. It will give you updates about your Facebook pokes, friend statuses and other notifications. You can also update your Facebook status by using Digsby.

As if this were not enough, there is good news for the compulsive twitter addicts. Twitter allows for updates via IM but Digsby also lets you read your friends’ tweets. You can click on the Twitter tab in your Digsby interface to do this.

Digsby allows for tabbed conversations and has amazing skinning options that makes your boring IM windows look really new age. Those who use gtalk must especially be starved for some skinning and emoticon action. Now you can quench those cravings with Digsby.

I personally use Windows but I understand that Digsby is compatible with Linux and Mac as any open-source software is likely to be. They also have support forums and wikis to assist the newbies.

Buxfer is an amazing money management site. I have been using this for a while now and it is very impressive.

The following are some of the functionalities that Buxfer offers:

1. Group Money Management:

If you have roomies or friends with whom you make regular financial transactions, then Buxfer is the place to record them. You can add your friends’ email ids to your group and a transparent system takes care of showing the I-O-Us to the concerned people in the group.

2. Bank Statement Import:

You can import your monthly Bank Statements in Quicken, MS-Money or .csv formats. Buxfer neatly and intuitively lists out all your credits and expenses in your transaction data.

3. Expense Analysis:

By adding tags to all your expenses, you can see a pie chart of how your money has been spent. This would help you understand the areas in which your money is wasted or well-spent, allowing you to alter your spending methods.

4. Scheduled Payments:

You can schedule monthly loan or insurance payments to be automatically debited from your statement. This will save you time while keeping track of your regular expenses. There is also a facility to set reminders for such payments.

5. Budget Maker

You can set a budget for certain expenses and try to keep within the limits. Buxfer gives you an indication when you exceed your budget.

Buxfer has many more tools and features which go a long way in letting you take control of your money.

Some typical Web 2.0 features include:

a) The ability to add a new transaction through SMS.
b) A google gadget that can also be embedded into Netvibes (like everything else. :-))
c) Intelligent auto-tags
d) RSS feeds for your transactions
e) A frontpage that shows you in a nutshell what your current status is.
f) A site blog with regular update news.

What more are you waiting for? Get in there and explore. Control your money.

Generator Land is a site full of links to hilarious generators of all kinds of things. Ok! I’ll try to contain my excitement and be more decipherable.

The Star Trek Plot Generator came up with these: (of course they have misspelled “whilst” everywhere) (at last I got an opportunity to use sic..hehehe)

1. Whlist (sic) investigating a space warp the guest star gets brainwashed when the Enterprise encounters a horde of little things which tries to ingest them and hijacks the Enterprise so the guest star dies a heroic death, which means everything turns out okay, and everybody forgets it ever happened. Then, finally Sulu says something snappy and they leave at warp factor ten.

2. Whlist (sic) ferrying bigwigs about the crew of the USS Enterprise gets brainwashed when the Enterprise encounters an apparent duplicate of Spock which is in fact an android but their opponent turns out to be mad and vulnerable to a show of emotion and so the guest star dies a heroic death, which means everything turns out okay, and everybody forgets it ever happened. Then, finally Spock says something snappy and they leave at warp factor nine.

(Now try substituting all those names with Indian names or kinship terms like chitti, chittappa, paati. Heehee! )

With the Band Bio Generator I came up with my own band and its phenomenal bio: (My band is called Fluorescent Afros ;-))

A history of indie rock icons: Fluorescent Afros

Originally formed in an abandoned laundromat in Tiruchirapalli, Fluorescent Afros rose to the top of the indie rock scene in 2007 with their debut album, Yet to be released. The band’s latest album, Already released, juxtaposes Sharadtriyama’s irreverent lyrical stylings with road-seasoned instrumentation to somehow pump out some seriously inspired crowd pleasers. With standout tracks like “Release,” already certified platinum in Europe, Fluorescent Afros can count on loads of future success.

And finally for the greatest of them all – Dilbert Mission Statement Generator
Want to get a bullshitty mission statement for the work you do? Use this one.
1. Our challenge is to proactively restore quality benefits while continuing to dramatically build long-term high-impact meta-services while promoting personal employee growth.
2. We strive to professionally integrate corporate infrastructures in order that we may seamlessly restore prospective deliverables to set us apart from the competition.

Well, Enlightenment 0.17 is the latest version, and 0.16 is the most loved version yet. Of what? A window manager for Linux desktops. If you are a new Linux user, you probably don’t know about desktop environments or window managers other than KDE and GNOME. While these projects have been around for some time, they are less scalable and are feature packed than old ones and light ones like TWM, FVWM2, WindowMaker (which I will cover in a future post) and also the new and popular lightweight desktop environment, XFCE.

A screenshot of E-0.16. Pager on the left-bottom, and iconbox on the right-bottom.

Note transparency on the terminal program E-term.

Each mouse button is assigned a menu when clicked on desktop.

While all these other window managers are more about functionality than style, Enlightnment (simply and affectionately called E ) is in a different league. And it is not my favourite window manager, but it is what I would like my favourite window manager (WindowMaker) to look like. Simply put, E exudes class. It is the Mercedes Benz – no, make that the Bugatti, of window managers in Linux. It has some great graphical eye candy in all its themes, especially Ganymede, which will make other window managers look positively sedentary. Enlightenment was developed from code used on FVWM2. This window manager was highly customizable, and these characteristics continued into E. There are plenty of image maps and all are put to good use on the title bars and the decorations and window borders. Transparency used in locations which you would not have imagined. There is a set of applets called Enlightenment Epplets, or simply Epplets, which run on your desktop, everything from music players and sound mixers and desktop lock and screensaver controllers, a command line, a drive mounter, CPU and memory and network traffic shown as “flames” of different intensities, all right there, on the desktop. These applets, called Enlightenment Epplets, are themed by each theme which comes with E, and so everything on that graphical real estate in front of your eyes is a visual treat.

The menus don’t come on a task bar. There is no concept of one. All menus are accessible on a click on the desktop. And there are multiple desktops, virtual desktops and pagers. You can customize wallpapers for them, you can scroll down to the desktop above or below. Move your mouse to the edge of the screen and voila, you have moved to the next desktop. Navigating in a multi tasking environment could not be easier.

Then there are the task management facilities – there is an iconbox, which catches any window you may be minimizing, and stores it as a small image icon of the same. The kind of feature which Windows and some of these other Linux based window managers would have to kill to have. The titlebars and endlessly customizable. There are also the special effects – FX Ripples and FX Waves which create ripples and waves on your desktop. The menus are customizable, and there is the popular E-conf tool, which is also known as the Enlightenment Configurator – E-Conf, for short.
Enlightenment has been subject to criticism – for being a resource hog especially on lower end machines. It has crashes with some themes, but things can be set right by editing E’s configuration files in a text editor and restarting the window manager. Which is another superb feature – you can simply restart Enlightnment from a menu command and not affect the other processes you have open. This is really useful if you want to install a new theme or test a theme you have created.

E-themes are highly customizable!

Note E-epplets on left cluster and right, also a special menubar on the extreme right! There’s plenty to play around with in Linux, and Enlightenment window manager is a good place to start. It is a clean desktop environment and is really very slick in terms of visual quality and the “gnarly” factor. If you want functionality with style, albeit without the heavy customizations and conventional styles of the other window managers like KDE and GNOME, try Enlightenment. It won’t let you down. 🙂

Launchy is a free windows utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager.

Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!

More details are available here. It’s a very useful tool. Simply press the key combination: Alt + Space to bring up the launcher and in a few keystrokes, you can run your favorite program. Furthermore, you can also index your documents, music, etc. Of course, if you’ve found a better alternative, please feel free to leave comments.

The site calls itself user-friendly, and that is precisely what it is. The site lists over 10000 free fonts for viewing and downloading. Usually fonts sites are cumbersome to navigate through, and previews are either unavailable or misleading. Clicking on one link could take us to another site altogether. Advertisements litter the pages and you generally have a hard time before you find a font you were looking for (which is unlikely) or before you settle for something lesser.

Better Fonts is better in so many ways because it shows a direct and immediate preview of every font. There are very for all types of documents, listed in alphabetical order. There are some interesting fonts like A Bug’s Life and A Picture Alphabet. Navigation is a breeze.

This is the interface of the site.

Clicking a font from the list on the left will display its preview onthe right. You can change the preview text as well. After this, if youwish to download the font, you can immediately do so from the link givenbelow.